NAB’s Ross McEwan shares how Queen Elizabeth carried her cash

When you are a monarch, there is no need to carry a plastic debit card. NAB’s Ross McEwan remembers his dealings with the Crown during his six years running the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Coutts, Royal Bank of Scotland’s private bank and wealth-management arm, owned a cab which would transport cash to the palace. Picture: Getty Images

Queen Elizabeth did not need a bank debit card – she had a cab to carry her cash.

The late monarch was a customer of NAB chief executive Ross McEwan during his previous role running the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Mr McEwan said RBS looked after Her Majesty via its private bank, Coutts, which also counted the late Queen Mother as a customer.

But the big-four bank boss said he never met Queen Elizabeth, nor did she need to visit an RBS branch, and he was pretty certain she didn’t carry a plastic debit card in one of her many handbags. Instead, Coutts had its own arrangements with the Crown.

“We did have a London cab that was owned by Coutts that actually took the cash down to the palace and had the entry point to take cash into the palace as they required it,” Mr McEwan said.

“The Queen didn’t have a card that I was aware of but she was a longstanding customer of the bank.”

The Queen will leave most of her fortune to King Charles III, her oldest son, including tens of billions of dollars’ worth of luxury property, fine artworks and priceless crown jewels that are perpetually held by the monarch.

Hundreds of millions of dollars of Queen Elizabeth II’s private wealth — including two palaces and an investment portfolio — are also expected to be left to Charles.

While Mr McEwan said he was never granted an audience with the Queen during his six years running RBS, he met other members of the royal family.

“I think she was a sensational leader of people. She had a dignity about her and a friendliness that everybody saw, they warmed to her,” he said.

“It just feels like we’ve lost our most loved grandmother we’ve ever had, and I think people are feeling it.

“I connected with friends of mine this morning in the UK. There was a genuine sorrow, respect but sorrow, for what a magnificent leader she’d been for 70 years.

“There will be a lot of our colleagues at work here who have engaged with the royal family. We’ve known nobody else so we’re acknowledging that.”

NAB chief executive Ross McEwan said the Queen was a “sensational leader of people”.

Mr McEwan expects the Queen’s head to remain on Australian currency, and that the Royal Australian Mint was unlikely to remove cash featuring her profile all at once.

“I don’t think there’s any urgency for it but over time you replace that with the new king, King Charles III. But at this stage, no change whatsoever,” he said.

Business Council of Australia chief executive Jennifer Westacott also paid tribute to the Queen. “I will never forget the words she spoke after September 11, when she said ‘grief is the price we pay for love’ and during Covid when she reminded us all during lockdown that ‘we will meet again’,” Ms Westacott said.

“Although we never knew her, it is like she has been with us all our lives, carefully guiding us with her decency, dignity and grace. Our lives without her will never be the same.”

Melbourne-based entrepreneur David Prior, who became the first Australian to own a distillery in Scotland, sinking half his net worth – about $40m – to acquire Bladnoch in 2015, meanwhile, has a case awaiting for King Charles.

Charles visited Mr Prior’s distillery in September 2019 and the pair met again earlier this year when Mr Prior was recognised in The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise in the UK.

“They (Charles and his wife Camilla) had a great tour and really enjoyed the Bladnochs, so we laid down a cask for them. That’s there whenever they come and visit again.”